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Winning Poems

If You're a Poet, We Want to Know it! 2021 Volume 9 – Voyages

Congratulations to our winners!

Child category | Teen category | Adult category | Previous years' ebooks | This year's ebook | Instructions for downloading |

First place – Child category

The leaves blowing

The blossoms blow in the autumn breeze

And buzzing around are the bees

The rattle snake is making cake

A possum in a blossom tree

Go on the trail and maybe you'll get a tail

The kangaroos are doing poos

The jungle beat the jungle feet

Klara Neill

Second place – Child category

Fly Little Lantern

Your flame glows bright,

You cast off into the black night sky,

A hot air balloon for a mouse.

Fly as tall as the mountains,

Up in the clouds,

Wrapped in your thin, gold paper house.

What you see below you,

Is small and bright,

Fly little lantern,

Fly high.

Isabelle Dickinson

Third place – Child category

Home

The moon shines bright in the cold dark night and reaches for the sky.

It flies with grace through the black empty space, which is made of twinkling stars.

When dawn breaks, the sun awakes and climbs the golden stair.

To a place where the clouds await to journey on the warm morning air.

Like a bird, the sun flies above a world of green and blue.

Where the wind calls and the leaves fall and the waves are a deep ocean hue.

They lap the shore of golden sand, while up above there is a man

beckoning you to come back home, where you will be safe and warm.

Charlotte Apperley

Honourable Mention – Child category

The Rakaia

Just granddad and me on the mighty

RAKAIA

Just him and me and the wind and sea

Sailing the ocean with the wind and the sea

I love the sea with just him and me

the ship and the sun and the waves

Ezekiel Baillie

Honourable Mention – Child category

Voyage of the royal albatross

We spread our magnificent wings and take to the sky.

Spinning and diving like a falling feather.

We travel as far as 190,000 km a year as we soar in glorious movements.

We voyage across the shining waters of New Zealand, hungry for adventure.

We spend the 42 years of our life doing what we love most. Voyaging.

We are the rulers of the sky,

We are the Royal Albatross.

Kourtney Gibson

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Teen category

The three entrants are presented below in alphabetical order.

Moon voyage

Three, two, one, blast off

Up in space we see the moon

We are here at last

Jasmine Fay

ocean travel

The boat has left shore

at midnight under full moon

as the stars shine bright

Joe Popham

"Voyages"

Voyages

Ocean

 ...beyond the horizon

Sky

...looking towards the future

Earth

 ...to where I am today, to learn

My life

...is a small voyage, full of love and happiness

My voyage is...

..uncharted

Ella Taniwha

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First place – Adult category 

Piripi's Last Journey

Matariki, the Eyes of God

Voyaging across our skies

The blue bright Sisters, hotter than our sun

Where Hiwa-i-te-rangi, a wishing star

Awaits our dreams of growth; a time

To be grateful, share bounty and feast; a time

To release the spirits of those we have lost; it’s time

To follow the pathway across the sky

Turn left at the Pot

Into the care of Pohutukawa, my Piripi

Anne Veronica Delamore

Second place – Adult category

The Final Voyage of an Agnostic by a Lifelong Atheist

First, I travelled down to Hell in case I had committed a sin

That is where I was welcomed in

There I discovered the Netherworld and, while I was there,

I found my whole sad life laid bare

So next, when I sampled Purgatory, I met so many of my friends

That should have been the journey's end

But, just in case, I decided to make a visit to Heaven above

And that is where I found True Love

Beverley Betterfly

Third place – Adult category

driveway bananas

we sidestep the parked cars and we stop we waitwelookwelisten

we lunge at a trolley, dance around the eden of

forbidden fruit, balanced perfectly at hand height

we cascade our findings into the depths of our

four wheels, you buckled in tight and squealing around the corners

bread spills down the driveway, then the bananas, a wait-for-me-please misdemeanour

up the stairs, again and again, you, your gumboots, the flurry of

bags and please don’t eat all the carrots, darling, because

I know you are famished from going-going all

afternoon, but dinner is soon.

Kaitlyn Wislang

Honourable Mention – Adult category

First Waka

Steering by stars, by the blistering sun. Living off the sea

catching rain as it slashed across. Surfing huge swells

everything tied down: perched high, falling into troughs

sickening thuds, everything creaking, young ones shrieking

in terror, in exhilaration. Studying signs: clouds and currents

Getting a suggestion of shore, a smell of warm land, plants floating past.

A smudge on the horizon enlarging over days until it fills their view.

Relief streaking salt-crusted faces. Hulls scraping up sand. Wary eyes

swivelling everywhere. Legs unsteady on the land. Drinking cool creek water.

Looking around, being here. Not sleeping: the earth too still beneath their bodies.

John Ewen

Honourable Mention – Adult category

Smorgasbord

On OE in Denmark, you taste a different diet –

frikadeller, sild, saltfisk - and try out new words

for texture, flavour. Your tongue makes two journeys.

Some words you don’t like. Herring by any name

make you hawk and gag.

What you like best is breakfast. You rise

almost as early as the baker to buy enough rundstykker

for us all. You lay the table and call us to eat

Kom sa, morgenmad. Spise nu.

You savour every mouthful.

Trish Veltman

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ebooks from previous years' competitions 

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ebook from this year's competition

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Instructions

Clicking the above links will take you to the Smashwords Library.

If you don’t have an e-reading application installed on your device, follow the instructions below.

It’s easy to read ebooks on your desktop or laptop computer. Simply download an e-reading application as follows:

EPUB

For PCs and Laptops

Download and install the free Adobe Digital Editions from the Adobe website

For Apple iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch/Mac

Download the free Apple iBooks app from the App Store

For Android devices

Download Aldiko from the Google Play Store (a free e-reading app)

After you install one of the above apps, simply return to your Smashwords Library; click to the book you want to download, then click to download the EPUB file format. Your web browser should ask you if you want to use the app to read immediately, or if you want to download the book to your computer (if you download to your computer, the Desktop is a good location to drop the file so you can find it).

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